by T. S. Eliot
The poem was declined by several musical publishers on the ground that it paid too great a tribute to the charms of German youth to be acceptable to the English public. I acknowledg’d the force of the objection, but replied that it was only to be regarded as a punitive measure, and to show the readiness and devotion to duty of the British seaman.
Title Up Boys and at ’Em!: although Wellington denied the attribution to him, Up Guards and at them! became current after Waterloo. Kipling: “‘Ye-es. Same old catchwords—same old training. “Shoulder to shoulder”—“up, boys, and at ’em!”’” The Outsider (1900).
we’ll sink your ship!: more than a dozen warships, enemy and allied, were lost in the first two months of the Great War.
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To Aiken, 10 Jan 1916:
I owe you many apologies, but I have been most frightfully busy. The news is that I am to be at Highgate School, near town, next term, that I am starting to rewrite my thesis, that my wife has been very ill, that I have been taken up with the worries of finance and Vivien’s health, that my friend Jean Verdenal has been killed, that nothing has been seen of [Martin] Armstrong, who is now a captain in Kitchener’s army, that compulsion is coming in, that my putative publisher will probably be conscripted, that we are very blue about the war, that living is going up, and that
King Bolo’s big black bassturd kween
That airy fairy hairy un
She led the dance on Golder’s green
With Cardinal Bessarion.
I am keen about rhymes in –een:
King Bolo’s big black bassturd kween
Her taste was kalm klassic
And as for anything obscene
She said it made her ass sick.
As for literature, have you seen our Katholick Anthology? (Elk. Matthews). It has not done very well, in spite of the name of Yeats. I have written nothing lately, too much absorbed by practical worries. Your idea of a kwaterly is very attractive but
King Bolo’s big black bassturd kween
Was awf’ly sweet pure
She interrupted prayers one day
With a shout of Pig’s Manure.
But I repeat that
K. B. b. b. b. k.
Was awfly sweet pure
She said “I don’t know what you mean!”
When the chaplain* whistled to her
* Charles, the Chaplain.
But about the P[oetry] Journal, you see I would be thrown out of Poetry if I wrote for that, and Poetry pays—which is everything to me.
That airy fairy hairy un: “She was a beau-ti-ful Bul-ga-ri-an, | Oh! Such a light and fair-y air-y ’un”, from The Maid of Phillipopolis (Popular College Songs ed. Lockwood Honoré, 1891, 30–31) (Schuchard 235).
Cardinal Bessarion: Roman Cardinal of Greek origin who contributed to the 15th-century revival of letters.
Elk. Matthews: the publisher Elkin Mathews.
Charles, the Chaplain: beginning in Feb 1914, Charlie Chaplin had made some fifty short films in two years. “Charlie Chaplin is not English, or American, but a universal figure, feeding the idealism of hungry millions in Czecho-Slovakia and Peru”, The Romantic Englishman, the Comic Spirit, and the Function of Criticism (1921). “The egregious merit of Chaplin is that he has escaped in his own way from the realism of the cinema and invented a rhythm”, Dramatis Personæ (1923). For TSE photographed with “Charlie Chaplin moustache” by E. McKnight Kauffer, see Letters 4 following 410. For Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin, see Dearest Mr. Groucho Marx 28.
In Letters to Ezra Pound
To Pound, 31 Oct 1917:
I have been invited by female VANDERVELDE to contribute to a reading of pOETS: big wigs, OSWALD and EDITH Shitwell, Graves (query, George?) Nichols, and OTHERS. Shall I oblige them with our old friend COLUMBO? or Bolo, since famous?
One day Columbo went below
To see the ship’s physician:
“It’s this way, doc” he said said he
I just cant stop a-pissin’ …
or
King Bolo’s big black kukquheen
Was fresh as ocean breezes.
She burst aboard Columbo’s ship
With a cry of gentle Jesus.
Vandervelde · · · a reading: almost certainly the invitation from Sibyl Colefax to read at her house in Onslow Square on 12 Dec 1917. See note to A Cooking Egg 14, Sir Alfred Mond, and headnote to The Hippopotamus.
gentle Jesus: Charles Wesley: “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” (hymn).
————
To Pound, 30 Aug 1922:
99% of the people who “appreciate” what one writes are undisguisable shits and that’s that. Your notes, epistolary, telegraphic, etc. are cordially appreciated and after I have corrected the speling will in due time appear and in due time be paid for. With most grateful thanks yours always sincerely, faithfully. I received a letter from your friend Watson most amiable in tone
For below a voice did answer, sweet in its youthful tone,
The sea-dog with difficulty descended, for he had a manly bone.
(From The Fall of Admiral Barry).
offering $150 for the “Waste Land” · · ·
More presently.
King Bolo’s big black basstart kuwheen,
That plastic elastic one,
Would frisk it on the village green,
Enjoying her fantastikon.
T.
The Fall of Admiral Barry: Rear-Admiral Edward B. Barry became commander of the US Pacific fleet, 2nd Division in 1899. His flagship, the West Virginia, docked in Manila Harbour, in 1909. After 45 years’ service he was forced to resign in 1911 after an alleged liaison with a cabin boy.
plastic elastic: elastic deformation returns to its original shape, plastic deformation to its deformed shape.
fantastikon: OED “fantastico”: “Obs. An absurd and irrational person.” Romeo and Juliet II iv: “The pox of such antique lisping affecting fantasticoes [Q1; phantacies F] · · · a very good whore”.
————
TSE sent Pound more of this ballad on 22 Oct 1922:
“In old Manila harbour, the Yankee wardogs lay,
“The stars stripes streamed overhead, the band began to play;
“The band struck up the strains of the old Salvation Rag,
And from the quarter mizzentop there flew REAR ADMIRAL BARRY’S flag.”
Oser 24: “Though Mrs. Eliot doesn’t identify the author of The Fall of Admiral Barry in her edition of her husband’s letters, Donald Gallup, who did the research on the ballad for Mrs. Eliot, finds ‘justification for saying that the verses are Eliot’s’ (Donald Gallup, conversation with the author, September 15, 1993). Marie Borroff has since pointed out to me that Eliot’s chief source was Tennyson’s The Revenge.” Tennyson: “At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, | And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away”, The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet 1–2.
Yankee wardogs: among the Tandy papers (BL) is a version of Major Innes Randolph’s Good Ol’ Rebel Soldier (“I’m a reconstructed rebel”) with a note at foot: “Typed by TSE in Room 510 at Broadcasting House, 24 June 1938”. The last verse reads: “I hate the Yankee Nation | And everything they do; | I hate the Declaration | Of Independence too. | I hate the Yankee eagle | With all his scream and fuss: | BUT the lyin’ theivin’ Yankee— | I hate him WUSS AND WUSS.” See headnote to The Dry Salvages, 2. “THE RIVER IS WITHIN US, THE SEA IS ALL ABOUT US”.
————
TSE to Pound, 3 Sept 1923, during the gestation of Sweeney Agonistes (see headnote there, 2. ARISTOPHANES):
have mapt out Aristophanic comedy, but must devote study to phallic songs, also agons.
King Bolo’s big black basstart queen
Was awfly bright & cheerful;
Well fitted for a monarch’s bride
But she wasnt always keerful.
Ah yes King Bolo’s big black queen
Was not above suspicion;
&
nbsp; We wish that such was not the case—
But whats the use of wishin?
The dancers on the village green
They breathed light tales of Bolo’s queen
The ladies of King Bolo’s court
They gossiped with each other
They said “King Bolo’s big black queen
Will soon become a mother”
They said “an embryonic prince
Is hidden in her tumbo;
His prick is long his balls are strong
And his name is Boloumbo”.
Basstart is the feminine form of bassturd. Brock is a bassturd.
King Bolo’s · · · queen | Was not above suspicion: “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion” (trad., based on Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar).
Brock: OED 1: “A badger: a name, in later times, associated especially with the epithet stinking.” 2: “A stinking or dirty fellow; one who is given to ‘dirty tricks’, a ‘skunk’.” TSE reviewed Arthur Clutton-Brock’s The Ultimate Belief in International Journal of Ethics Oct 1916, and in this letter to Pound he writes of “your friend Clutton Brock, who is the dirtiest shit with the worst mind in London”.
————
To Pound, Holy Innocents’ Day [28 Dec] 1934:
Podesta whats this rumour about me bain COARSE you know better than that Podesta mirthful I am truthful I am drunken I am and when I get with those Harvard professors hilarious I sometimes may be but no never Coarse thats just your joke or somebody gettin a rise out of You: That said Columbo was a Joke / But I call it crude & coarse / Such conversation I have heard / From the lips of Maltese whores etc. etc. so heres yours for better breaks,
TP
Podesta: local governor or official in Italy, where Pound was then resident.
————
To Pound, 17 Jan 1935:
ROAR Podesta ROAR, like any efficient druid, shanachie or scop:
And if you hear anyone else talking, tell him from me that I wish him to stop.
ROAR Podesta ROAR, the only original Anglo-American wop.
Let us celebrate the Podesta’s merits:
they say his prick has steel springs in it like a tape-measure,
So that it can be adjusted to fit any size or shape of cunt,
thus giving the maximum of pleasure,
Thus solving completely various problems of work and of leisure.
shanachie: OED “sennachie”: “In Ireland and the Scottish Highlands: One professionally occupied in the study and transmission of traditional history, genealogy, and legend”. scop: OED: “An Old English poet or minstrel.”
In Letters to Bonamy Dobrée
Having served on the Palestine front during the Great War, Dobrée met TSE in 1924. Two years later, despite discouragement from TSE (letter 11 Aug 1926), he accepted a post as professor in Cairo, where he remained until 1929 (Dobrée).
To Dobrée, 10 May 1927, introducing the primitive inhabitants of Bolovia:
A notoriously lazy race. They had two Gods, named respectively Wux and Wux. They observed that the carving of Idols out of ebony was hard work; therefore they carved only one Idol. In the Forenoon, they worshipped it as Wux, from the front; in the Afternoon, they worshipped it from Behind as Wux. (Hence the Black Bottom). Those who worshipped in front were called Modernists; those who worshipped from behind were called Fundamentalists.
named respectively Wux and Wux: “WUSS AND WUSS” (worse and worse); see note to letter to Pound, 30 Aug 1922.
Black Bottom: Ma Rainey (1886–1939), “the mother of the blues”, recorded Black Bottom in 1927.
————
To Dobrée, 22 June 1927:
Since I Last Wrote I have much more Information about the theology of primitive Bolovians (a race of comic Neogroes wearing bowler Hats—why did they wear bowler Hats—that I will Tell you—because their Monarch wore a Top hat (they were divided into monophysites, duophysites, hecastophysites and heterophysites. (Also I have discovered the text and tune of their National Anthem, which I have learned to Sing.)
————
To Dobrée, 26 July [1927]:
It appears that an unpublished poem by Miss Elizabeth Barrett has been discovered in Salamanca, suppressed from publication by her husband the flagitious Robt. Browning, which throws new light on the God Wux. The first verse (or stanzo) runs as follows:
What was he doing, the Great God Wux?
Down in the weeds by the river?
Splashing and paddling with feet of a dux
And washing his sox with a packet of lux
And smashing the vegetable matter that mux
About on the face of the river?
It is known that Wux was always depicted with duck feet (the images have perished, as the island of Bolovia sank into the sea in the year 1500, doubtless as a protest against the Renaissance, including Pater, Bernhard Berenson, Vernon Lee and Middleton Murry). But as Miss Barrett says “feet of a dux” it may be inferred that she inclined to the Duophysite or alternatively to the Duotheistic party. Four feet means two Gods. This is a serious check to my own opinions, which were that Wux or Wuxes were two Persons and one Substance, or alternatively two Substances and one Person.
What was he doing · · · the river?: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Musical Instrument (in Oxf Bk of English Verse):
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
lux: a brand of soap powder.
Pater, Bernhard Berenson, Vernon Lee: see note to WLComposite 285: “Symonds—Walter Pater—Vernon Lee”. Berenson had anglicised his first name to Bernard in 1914.
————
To Dobrée, 7 Aug [1927]:
You should now, I think, be prepared to accept the first stanzos of the Boloviad. You must not be impatient, as this great poem—only to be compared to the Odyssey and the Chansong de Roland—moves slowly. The first Stanxo is as follows (in my forthcoming edition there will be 36 pages of commentary to make this stanzo more intelligible):
NOW Chris Columbo lived in Spain—
Where Doctors are not many:
The only Doctor in his town
Was a Bastard Jew (named Benny).
To Benny then Columbo went—
With countenance so Placid:
And Benny filled Columbo’s Prick
With Muriatic Acid.
You may say that this exordium—magnificent as it is—has nothing to do with Bolovia and the Bolovians. But wait. You must first work through the Catalogue of Ships, the Inventory of Sailors, the Voyage etc. before we bring C. Columbo (Able Seaman) to the western Land of Bolovia. So no more for the Present. Yours etc.
T. S. E.
The next Stanxo starts—
Columbo and his Caravels
They set sail from GenOHa,
Queen Isabella was aboard!—
That famous Spanish HO-AH …
Muriatic Acid: household cleaner.
Caravels: OED 1: “A kind of ship: variously applied at different times, and in relation to different countries”, with Thomas Fuller, 1642: “The King of Spain .. sent a Caravall of adviso to the West Indies.”
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To Dobrée, Monday [15 Aug 1927]:
I will treat your Convalescence with literary-historical instead of Philosophico-theological matters, and introduce
THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS
The Flagship of Columbo’s Fleet
Was call’d THE VIRGIN MARY;
An able vessel fully mann’d
By Seamen brown & hairy.
The other Ships came on behind—
The HOLY GHOST and JESUS;
Well stock’d, to sail o’er perilous seas,
With Ham and Cheddar Cheeses.
THE CATALOGU
E OF SHIPMATES
The Cook who serv’d them Pork & Beans
Was known as Careless Cora;
A Dame of Pure Australian Blood—
(With a tincture of Angora).
She wore a Jumper short and red,
Which closely did her shape fit;
And the hair that Lay along her Back
Was Yellow (like ripe ape-shit).
Catalogue of Shipmates to be continued through 25 stanzoes.
What, you will say, has all this to do with Bolovia? Patience. It took Chris. Columbo 3 months to reach Bolovia; can you not wait a fortnight?
Catalogue of Ships: as in Iliad bk II.
Flagship of Columbo’s Fleet | Was call’d THE VIRGIN MARY: Columbus sailed on the Santa María and Spanish ships long continued to bear religious names (Donald Sommerville, personal communication).
Angora: OED “Angostura” has M. E. Braddon: “Propped up with sherry and Angostura bitters.”
the hair that Lay along her Back | Was Yellow (like ripe ape-shit): Rossetti: “Her hair that lay along her back | Was yellow like ripe corn”, The Blessed Damozel 11–12.
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To Dobrée, [17 Aug 1927]:
I am like the Antient Mariner: Intuition (in the Murravian Sense) impels me to fix from time to time One Person with my Eye, and compel him to listen to Bolovian affairs; many are passed over, but One is chosen, and you are among the chosen to pass on the Gospel:
The Wedding Guest Here Beat his Breast
For He Heard the Loud Wuxoon.
